Baker, Warren ride huge turnout to victory

Neal Simpson The Patriot Ledger @nsimpson_ledger

Tuesday

Nov 6, 2018 at 12:01 AMNov 7, 2018 at 1:38 AM

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Refusing to be sidelined as Democrats waged a pitched battle for control of Congress, voters in Massachusetts turned out in droves Tuesday despite torrential rain and long lines to cast ballots in what was billed as one of the most consequential midterm elections in decades.

While none of the races on Massachusetts ballots were expected to tip the balance of power in Washington, some election officials here were left scrambling to keep up with the demand for ballots as voters eagerly lined up to voice their frustration with national politics.

Secretary of State William Galvin had predicted that about 2.4 million Massachusetts voters would cast a ballot before the end of the day Tuesday, more than in any other midterm election in more than two decades.

But while voters elsewhere gave Democrats control of the House on Tuesday night, the nation's new-found enthusiasm for voting had little effect here in Massachusetts as the state's voters delivered re-election victories for a slew of incumbents, including Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who has become a favorite target of President Donald Trump and other Republicans, coasted to an easy victory over Republican Geoff Diehl, a state representative from Whitman who was co-chairman of Trump's campaign in Massachusetts.

Voters overwhelmingly defeated a ballot measure that would have limited the number of patients who could be assigned to nurses in the state. Voters approved a ballot question upholding a law prohibiting discrimination against transgender people in public places, and approved another question creating a citizens commission that will advocate for constitutional amendments related to corporate campaign spending.

Election Day voting in Massachusetts took place against a national backdrop of hyperpartisan politics and an increasingly tribal divide in the electorate that manifested itself in a firestorm of vitriolic tweets, false claims and a television advertisement that some networks deemed too racist to broadcast.

Paul Watanabe, a professor of political science and director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass-Boston, said the lopsided results in Massachusetts races, along with the high voter turnout, suggests that the candidates and issues on the ballot were not the only things voters had on their minds.

"We’re at the height of this political moment in the United States, and I think people are eager to express a point of view, whether it’s anger, whether it’s frustration, whether it’s to affirm this administration or to oppose it," he said. "It was a Massachusetts state electorate that was driven by a national agenda that had very little impact on making any significant changes in the local scene."

Some voters went to the polls still horrified by President Donald Trump's election two years ago.

Alex Auer, a Quincy resident voting at the Thomas Crane Public Library, said it was enough for her just to make sure Warren stays in office. She said she was also eager to see the fate of elected Republicans elsewhere in the country, but didn't plan to wait up for results like she did in 2016.

"The last time I waited up, I felt like I was going to puke," she said.

Others heading to the polls Tuesday were eager for change of different kind.

Dan Maguire of Quincy was eager vote for Geoff Diehl, the Republican state representative running against Warren.

"Six years of her was enough for me," Maguire said. "It's time to move on."

Some voters said that what brought them to the polls Tuesday, besides a sense of civic duty, was the three ballot questions, especially one that would have repealed a 2016 state law that prohibited discrimination against transgender people in places of public accommodation.

Opponents of the law argued that it had opened the door for men to enter women's bathrooms, though they could point no such incidents in the two years since the law was passed. Many voters saw the question as an effort to roll back rights and protections only recently won by transgender people in Massachusetts.

"You shouldn't have a vote on someone else's rights, you know what I mean?" Quincy resident James Casavant said as he left the polls.

Many voters were also eager to vote on a measure that would set limits on the number of patients assigned to each nurse in the state's hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities. Both sides of the question spent millions of dollars trying to win over voters, some of whom acknowledged Tuesday that they still didn't feel like they fully understood what the measure would do and what impact it would have. Others said they were bewildered to find that some nurses supported the measure and others opposed it.

"One says yes, one says no," said Phyliss Maguire.

More than 584,000 residents cast ballots in early voting — which was being offered for the first time in a midterm election — but the number of voters who still wanted to cast a ballot by the time Election Day came around caught some poll workers off guard.

In Quincy's Thomas Crane Library, a line to the meeting room where voting was taking place stretched through the library's lobby and passed its front door to the children's reading area.

In Braintree, Town Clerk Jim Casey said lines at some polling places were 20 people deep at times, something he hadn't seen even on Election Day two years ago, when the acrimonious presidential race drew many first-time voters to the polls.

Casey said so many people had shown up to vote that he sent hundreds of extra ballots to some polling places, which started the day with 1,200 ballots each.